


Like Short Lived Punctuation Marks

by AdamantSteve



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Camping, Fishing, Get Together, M/M, Man Pain, Memory Loss, Mentions of rough sex, Regaining Memories, fix it (kind of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 09:21:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1422919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantSteve/pseuds/AdamantSteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve takes Bucky camping in a bid to jog his memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Short Lived Punctuation Marks

**Author's Note:**

> This is spoilery for Captain America: The Winter Soldier BUT I think you'd be ok if you hadn't seen it? 
> 
> Warnings for vague mentions of Bucky's actions as an assassin, talk of memory loss (which the entire fic is about), some vague PTSD symptoms. Also they go fishing and kill/gut/cook and eat the fish after, in case that might gross you out.
> 
> Beta read by Dunicha <3

  
  


Steve’s a marvel, always has been. Bucky can remember that much. The rest is in patches - random, useless memories that appear out of nowhere to make him stop for a second, close his eyes and hold his breath in the effort to hold onto them as best he can.

 

… Steve in the schoolyard, skinning his knee, the way tears welled up in his eyes but didn’t fall. They never fell.

 

… buying Steve a set of oilpastels one day, putting them in the back of a cupboard wrapped in tissue paper and waiting for some special reason to have bought him something so nice. He remembers not needing a reason. He can’t remember giving them to Steve.

 

… An old coffee can filled with stubs of pencils, erasers, a little bottle of ink.

 

… The two of them, stripped to the waist, trusting each other with a straight razor because even if there was nowhere to go in the middle of a war, they could pretend.

 

Steve comes up with an idea one day, says they should go camping, because why not? It’s good weather, it’d be nice to get out of the city, reasons and excuses that skirt right around ‘perhaps it’ll help’ because he’s nice like that. He makes out like it’s a favour Bucky’s doing for him, like the old days.

 

They hike out into the woods, an evergreen forest that feels nothing like France. Bucky watches Steve marching away, pack high on his back with his tin cup swaying from a strap, and remembers how the skinny kid that used to be his best friend hated the outdoors. Or how the outdoors hated him.

Steve turns and quirks his mouth to wordlessly ask ‘What are you waiting for?’ and Bucky catches up. It used to be Steve trailing after him.

 

“Are you waiting for me to get tired?” Bucky asks a few hours in. Steve looks like he’s been jolted out of his thoughts, and Bucky figures he might have never stopped walking if he hadn’t said something.

 

Steve shakes his head sheepishly and then looks around. “You wanna stop here?”

Bucky shrugs. They’re close enough to water, the ground’s level, there’s good cover from the elements. In that blank stretch between then and now, he thinks he’d have liked a place like this. “Sure,” he says.

 

He doesn’t try to remember things, because that’s like trying to catch a butterfly. The best way Bucky’s found is to let memories alight on his consciousness of their own free will. So laying out the ground sheet doesn’t do much more than feel faintly familiar under his fingertips. This must be some old relic that Steve paid too much for, that’s been made obsolete by modern materials. The thick, oily cotton leaves his fingers feeling tacky, which reminds him of dried blood and the numb pleasure of a mission objective achieved. He stops, and Steve stops too, stiffens as he watches and doesn’t say anything.

 

“Talk to me about the Dodgers,” Bucky says at last, taking a deep breath and going back to driving pegs into the ground.

 

Once the tent’s up, they walk down to the river for some rocks. They’ll make a neat little firepit when they get back, cook whatever it is Steve’s brought in that huge pack of his. Bucky hopes it’s not tins of spam from the 1940s, and says as much. Steve laughs warmly, and it makes Bucky’s heart clench a little - Steve doesn’t laugh a whole lot, but he remembers the sound, remembers the warmth the sound used to give him because he gets it now. Making Steve happy - he knows that used to be very important to him. It feels like it’s probably important to a lot of people now.

 

Sometimes, Bucky will catch Steve looking at him in a certain way, and he’ll think for a moment that maybe there’s more, maybe the friendship they used to share was more than that. It’s an idle hope, because Steve would have said something; he’s told Bucky everything else. The thought that Steve is hiding something makes Bucky feel queasy, and he pushes the idea out of his mind. No, if Bucky’s going to make sense of this world, then Steve has to be the steady rock around which everything else hangs. Bucky thinks that might have always been how it was.

 

There are fish in the river, fat silver things that gleam and dart beneath the surface. “We should catch some,” Bucky says, even though they have plenty to eat. Bucky likes the idea of doing something ancient and untainted, from before even their past.

 

“You mean make rods?” Steve asks, dipping the tip of his boot into the water, pulling it out and studying the shine of the wet leather.

Bucky shrugs. “Or a spear. Could maybe even just pull ‘em out.”

Steve looks skeptical, and Bucky grins - he can still grin. “You don’t think I could?”

Steve throws his head back and laughs, and Bucky feels like the sun is shining on him. “I gotta tell you, I would be pretty surprised if you could, even with your fancy gadget arm.”

 

They talk about the arm and Bucky’s glad of it, since so many people don’t say anything at all. “I don’t need the ‘fancy gadget’. I could catch ‘em with my normal arm.”

Steve sobers but his face is warm, soft with the ghost of his laughter. It makes Bucky feel bold, and he nods towards the water. “If I catch a fish with my bare hand, you gotta make the fire and gut the fish. And cook it. Whaddya say?”

 

Steve snorts. “You want me to feed it to you too?” He tosses a good sized rock to the pile and hums. “I think I could probably catch one. They do look slow.”

He looks up through his eyelashes at Bucky, hands on his hips. He carries the bravado he’s always had so much better now, older and bigger and with the strength to back it up. Bucky knows he had nothing to do with it, but he’s proud of the kid that turned into this man.

 

“Well, it’ll be dark soon enough, so we’d better get on it,” Bucky says, and Steve climbs back up the riverbank to start taking off his clothes. Bucky follows suit, til they’re both down to their underwear. Bucky looks for a moment too long. Steve doesn’t say anything, just looks at Bucky the same way. The chill of the water on Bucky’s toes jars him out of it and he thinks of butterflies alighting, tries not to hold on.

 

The water’s crisp when they wade in, the smooth rocks small enough to dig into their feet. Bucky treads on a loose one and it shifts, sending him into Steve, who hooks an arm around him to keep him up. “Easy there, soldier,” he murmurs, and Bucky has one of those scales-lifted-from-his-eyes moments where he goes back, to a cold river and the rest of their troop, splashing around washing their hair and laughing at Falsworth falling on his ass.

 

Steve’s still holding onto him when he shakes his head, smiling because it’s another tiny puzzle piece to add to the mess in his head.

 

“We can make you a rod if you need one,” Steve says. “I have a needle and thread back in the tent.”

Bucky shoves at him as he lets go, makes his way off to a spot he saw a fish lurking in earlier.

 

-

 

Bucky cheats, but Steve sees it. He was meant to see it, so it’s alright. He uses his metal arm because it’s faster and because it’s cold, the fish don’t seem to realise so fast. Steve says ‘unbelievable’ but he sounds fond, and he flicks water back when Bucky sends some his way. After a few hours they’re both soaked, tiny silver lives laid out on a boulder by the bank. Too many, but Bucky’s got this feeling like he has to get more than they need, like Steve might go hungry even with all that food back at the tent.

 

There’s another reason he keeps going, and Steve keeps going too, though he catches a third of the fish that Bucky does. It’s fun, is what it is. Fun and easy and those are two things that Bucky knows shouldn’t be as scary as they are. Scarier still is that he feels like he could be safe. Like he’s not alone anymore, maybe. Or that he’s never been alone at all.

 

He swats a hand through the cold water and it wets Steve’s hair down even as he’s indignantly splashing him back. Steve blinks and wades over, slipping as he does it and letting out a yelp as he falls in. It’s not too deep, maybe four feet at its deepest, and the current’s slow and easy, but Bucky feels a terror shoot through him, and he’s there in a shot, metal hand tight around Steve’s arm.

 

Steve gets up, shakes the water out of his hair like a dog as he rights himself, and there are white finger marks in his flesh when Bucky lets go. He’s shaken, more from Bucky’s ‘rescue’ than from the stumble, no doubt, but he smiles anyway. “Thanks, buddy,” he says, patting Bucky on the arm as he goes to the bank and sits down. His legs are long and lean, and Bucky remembers Steve’s pale skin, remembers how soft Steve’s thighs are. He feels like he remembers how they feel, but perhaps he’s just imagining it.

 

Suddenly, he can’t stand the thought of that perfect skin ever being hurt, or dirtied in any way. “I’ll gut the fish,” he says when Steve pulls a penknife from the heap of their clothes. Steve blinks at him for a moment before shrugging, handing over the knife with far too much trust.

 

Bucky guts the fish one by one, taking a strange sort of care over it. He knows Steve’s watching, knows he knows the things Bucky’s done with knives in the past, with bigger things than fish. It’s almost a pride that he feels, that he can be so good at a fine art like this, his lines so straight and neat. Delicate.

 

Perfect filets, fresh and clean and as pure as anything Bucky’s ever done. He hands them over to Steve, who’s half dressed now, and rinses the knife in the water. He feels holy - bits and pieces of things from the orphanage, stories about Jesus and fishes and baptisms and sacrifices. As much a blurred mixture as everything else in his world. The last of the blood washes away, and Bucky follows Steve back to the camp.

 

-

 

Steve makes a fire and heats one of the big rocks they found, turns it into a hotplate. Bucky has a sharp memory of doing something like this on his own, somewhere very cold, and of touching his fingertips to that huge heat. He can’t remember why he did it or where he was, and chases the memory away as fast as he can by moving, heading into the tent to look in his bag. There’s a notebook he’s been keeping - records of all the memories that have settled long enough for him to observe them with any level of detail. Steve doesn’t ask what he’s doing, which Bucky knows he should be grateful for - Steve tries so hard with him, but he growls and looks at him pointedly. “You should ask me things if you want to.”

“I do ask you things,” Steve replies, poking at a piece of fish with a knife.

“It’s a notebook,” Bucky continues, even though Steve still didn’t ask. “Of things I remember.”

Steve takes a breath, and Bucky can see his brain working as he does something he’s seen Sam do - this weird ‘taking a moment’ thing of a few breaths before a conscious response. Nothing brash, nothing reactionary.

“Don’t do that,” Bucky says.

“Excuse me?”

“That thing. Like you’re counting to ten. I might not remember a lot but I remember you having a temper. I remember you being a mouthy asshole and....” He stops, because the words form in his mouth but don’t come.

“And what?”

I miss you, is what Bucky was going to say, and it doesn’t fit because he doesn’t. How can he miss someone he doesn’t know?

 

They don’t speak while Steve puts out flakes of fish on tin plates. There’s red wine that doesn’t even have a label, and Bucky would bet it’s something of Stark’s, some French wine made expensive because the rest of it was destroyed by Nazis or drunk by desperate French peasants during the war. Donated for the lost cause of Bucky’s memories. He doesn’t ask, but takes it and swigs it anyway.

 

Bucky’s never really done much fine dining, but he knows you’re meant to drink white wine with fish, but it still tastes pretty good like this. The fish is earthy and tastes like nature, the wine tastes like wine, and Bucky thinks about Jesus again. Imagines Jesus with a metal arm, Jesus with a big shield with a cross instead of a star. He laughs, and catches Steve taking his one-two breath again.

 

Steve catches himself this time, and laughs. “What were you laughing at?” he asks, and Bucky smiles at the courtesy of hearing a straight question for once.

 

“I was imagining Jesus with your shield,” he answers. Steve was always more into the things the nuns had going, Bucky remembers that. Steve laughs though, spits out a bone that Bucky must have missed.

 

-

 

They haven’t talked about how there’s only the one tent. It’s big but still a tent, and their bed rolls are next to one another. Bucky could reach out and touch Steve without moving more than six inches if he wanted to. He does want to.

 

“Do you remember anything?” Steve asks, laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. Bucky rolls onto his back and looks at the pinprick light of the moon pushing through the canvas.

 

“I remember bits and pieces.”

There’s soft fabric sounds as Steve rolls onto his side to look at Bucky, and Bucky aches with moth-like memories of Brooklyn, of sleepovers and whispered conversations.

Steve whispers when he speaks again.

“Do you remember anything about me?”

 

Bucky risks a glance over; even in the dark he can feel Steve’s regard. Like this, anonymous in the dark, Steve really could be that kid in Brooklyn. He could be the man in France.

Bucky catches his breath, because it suddenly makes sense.

“We did this before, didn’t we? I thought it was just as kids, but it wasn’t, was it? The army… we…” he trails off, because he can’t explain it. Can’t explain the other side of this, a shape being revealed out of a block of marble - always there, hidden in plain sight.

 

Bucky reaches out with his good hand - the real one, the one he’s always had, and touches Steve’s chest. It’s the right temperature. Bucky’s not sure what the right temperature is but this is it. It’s a light touch but it sounds like it knocks the air out of Steve’s lungs, and that swells against Bucky’s memories like the river over the rocks. He fists his hand in the thin shirt and tugs, and Steve’s bigger now than he ever was, but he moves so easily, like it’s practiced, and Bucky realises it is practiced, and it’s normal. It’s normal to pull Steve down, normal to find his hand on the back of Steve’s neck, cradling the base of his skull as he angles his own head in counterpoint. It’s comfortable and easy and as simple as anything, like falling asleep used to be. Like laughing once was.

 

Steve sighs against him, one hand large and warm on Bucky’s hip, a memory made real, like a line re-traced. He tastes familiar, and it’s so long since anything’s been familiar that it’s frightening. Bucky tenses and Steve feels it, tenses too and pulls away. “Buck-“

Bucky moves his hand and grips at the hairs at the base of Steve’s skull. “No,” he says sharply. “Don’t stop this now, we’re finally- I didn’t- You just. Goddammit, Steve.”

Bucky lets go, hand dropping to his side. Steve’s still braced above him, and for everything else Bucky’s feeling, as hurt and pissed off and goddamn confused he is, it’s good to have him there, safe and sound and living.

 

“All this time and you didn’t tell me? Why?! What else are you hiding?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you, Buck,” Steve says, and he starts rolling back to where he was, except that feels so damn far and Bucky’s metal arm stops him. It’s not meant as a threat, not really, but Steve stops cold. Bucky gets the impression he could roll them right over, put Steve on his back and beat the living daylights out of him and Steve would let him.

 

“What if I’d never remembered?”

Steve’s at an awkward angle, but he stays where Bucky’s holding him. Bucky kind of wants to be shaken off, make Steve fight back. He’s tired of being treated with kid gloves.

“Stop acting like I’m some frail butterfly that’s gonna fall apart if you blow on me too hard!”

 

“You did that!” Steve says forcefully, pulling himself out of Bucky’s grip at last and sitting up on his side of the tent.

“Wait, what?”

“Before. You used to. Treat me like I was made out of spun sugar, even after the serum. I don’t have any goddamn idea what I’m doing, Buck.”

 

There’s the sound of scrabbling in the dark, a tin being opened and then a spark as a flint catches and a tiny little candle is lit. It’s blinding.

 

Steve’s lips are shiny and red, spots of colour high on his cheeks, and Bucky feels memories wash over him like sheets of rain. He remembers those lips, kissing them, licking them, pushing his thumb between them, his cock. Remembers them closing over his nipples with Steve looking up at him, blue eyes full of all the sin the nuns were so obsessed with.

 

“You liked it hard, didn’t you?” Bucky says slowly, the sound of Steve’s voice saying ‘please, Buck, don’t hold back’ ringing in his ears. The tang in his gut at the thought of hurting Steve. Steve’s actually blushing now, and it’s like a book’s been opened. “Tell me.”

 

“We used to-“ Steve stops and visibly steels himself, grits his jaw and looks up. “We used to fuck,” he says defiantly, like Bucky’s going to argue, with the facts or with the curse, he’s not even sure. “Most of the time you’d fuck me, and we started when we were kids, but we didn’t even really know that’s what it was back then. And yeah I did like it rough. Still do.”

 

There are more questions that Bucky wants to ask, needs to ask, and more things Steve has to say, clearly, but a possessiveness surges up in Bucky and all he can ask is, “You been with anyone else?”

 

A smile creeps over Steve’s face slowly, and eventually he’s shaking his head and laughing. It doesn’t answer his question, and it takes him longer, but Bucky starts laughing too.

“Answer the question!” Bucky says, sitting up himself and pushing at Steve’s shoulder. It’d probably knock a lesser man over, knock the whole tent over with him. Steve just rocks with it and sobers, and he’s suddenly in Bucky’s space, though still not touching.

 

“I thought you were dead.”

Bucky’s nostrils flare, but he doesn’t feel anger, still isn’t sure what he feels, really, just knows he needs to make Steve his again.

 

And that makes it much easier, having a mission that’s so black and white. They’re both looking at one another’s lips when Bucky says in a whisper, inches away from Steve, “You want me to fuck you.”

Steve just nods, and that’s all it takes.

 

Everything passes in snapshots after that, cause Bucky’s too busy to hold on to every moment in the greedy way he does these days. There is skin and lips and teeth, there is hardness and softness and so much heat that the tent fogs up like a steam room.

 

The candle survives for a little while, and Bucky recommits Steve’s lips to memory as they make their way over him, marking their territory anew. The colour of Steve’s cock is the same angry red of his lips in the cold, and Bucky kisses him there, makes his own red marks. There is the sight of Steve’s throat, long and smooth as he tips his head back, the sight of bruises blooming under careful pressure as Bucky wraps his hand there at Steve’s plea.

 

A tumble snuffs out the candle, though they’re both too absorbed in each other to mind much. There’s still the sounds to soak up, Steve’s voice growing bolder as he urges more, harder, as bossy as he ever was. Bucky feels connected with his past selves, each of them united in this trust of care. All of those Steves and all of those Buckys, connected across time. He does as Steve pleads, as Steve always pleaded, and goes harder, faster, deeper. He can’t see any bruises so perhaps that makes it easier, til he has Steve wrapped in his arms beneath him, tight and safe and all his.

 

-

 

Bucky wakes the next morning when it gets light, feeling groggy and sticky. Steve is snoring lightly, and the remnants of faded scratches litter his naked back. Bucky runs his fingers over the lines in wonder.

 

Steve blinks awake, and Bucky remembers him jerking awake in another time, knows that this is a laziness that’s hard won. It’s a trust that no one else will ever have and that he probably doesn’t deserve.

 

“Good morning,” Bucky says, and Steve grins at him sleepily. “Race you to the river?”

Steve closes his eyes for a second, and Bucky almost believes he’s not going to take him up on his challenge, so he’s a second behind when Steve leaps up and is off, bounding away to the riverbank as naked as a jaybird.

 

Bucky follows, calling out how unfair it is, how much of a rotten cheat Captain America is, til Steve sends a wave of freezing cold water in his direction. In the light of day he can see the bruises over Steve’s neck and his hips, though they’re already fading. He notices Steve looking at him the same way and doesn’t realise til then that he has his own set of lovebites and marks that are half gone themselves.

 

The water’s too cold to be pleasant, the heat of the day not making it the refreshment it was yesterday, but Bucky wades in anyway because he has to, has to get close to Steve and kiss him, fit his hands around that waist and hold on.

 

“Don’t leave again,” Steve says when they break apart. “Promise me.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Bucky replies. “Always.”

Steve nods and presses their foreheads together. “I know.”

 

A fish bumps against Bucky’s leg, and it’s like they’re trying to get eaten. He can’t promise not to leave again, they don’t have those kinds of lives, but then again, they’ve had more chances than most.

“I promise,” he says, kissing Steve chastely before darting away to splash Steve with his own little wave of cold water.

 

 


End file.
